Another First

I was watching the classic concert documentary "Gimme Shelter" the other day and marveling at how the Rolling Stones managed to play so well on that horrible December night in 1969 while mayhem happened all around them.

But now, I think I know. They must have been "in the zone", focusing on their music and trying to entertain. I got a taste of this the other day when, while the Eyewitness Blues Band played holiday songs outside Macy's Union Square, my car got towed. I was standing no more than 25 feet away at the time, and I had no idea my car was gone until I went to stow my gear in it after we wrapped.

In theory, I'm going to win my appeal, because the sign is pretty clear: the parking spaces were reserved for the Salvation Army Celebrity Bellringing event, which we were playing. But who knows?

What I do know is that I never thought I'd see the day when my car could be towed from practically beneath my nose without noticing. Apparently, life changes when you have a guitar in your hand.

Side Project

Look at me. Two years ago, I'd never played in a rock band (hell, I could hardly play three chords). Now, I have a "side project".

Well, sort of. I'm just about to perform live with two of my brothers, and two other guys who didn't know enough to say "no".

We've been practicing together for 8 weeks as part of the Bandworks program, which teaches folks to play as a group. Our poor instructor, Deirdre Lynds, admitted the first time we met that while she had worked with siblings in a band before, she'd never dealt with three of them at once. You can only imagine.

Still, I think we've had fun. It's been great for me to move into a slightly different role than my "hide over there and try not to screw up" bit in the Eyewitness Blues Band (let me be clear: that's how I see my role!). I'm actually going to play a couple of solos (don't worry, Jimi Hendrix, Angus Young, and Joe Satriani have nothing to fear), and willingly open my mouth to sing backing vocals. What would you think if I sang out of tune/would you stand up and walk out on me? I hope not.

It's kind of like the old line about golf: even a bad day on the course is better than a good day at the office. Same thing with music. We may have a half-dozen people in the house when we take the stage for our gig, but it'll still be rock and roll. And we'll still be nervous.

Rock on!

This Is Why We Do It

Mitch Albom wrote in this weekend's Parade magazine about a reunion of his high school band (they did it for his 50th birthday, and you can read about it here.)

Well, I never played in a band as a kid. I'm getting to do it now, as a middle-aged empty-nester with a mortgage and progressive lenses. And while I'm sure Mitch enjoyed revisiting his old memories, I'm getting to enjoy those memories as we make them.

Latest case in point: our gig over the weekend at Alameda's Webster Street Jam. Could have been a disaster. No electricity at the stage, so we started 45 minutes late (after only 15 minutes of setup time). No real soundcheck. In my haste to set up, I screwed up and couldn't get sound out of my amp until the rest of the band was playing. Oh, and we were about to premiere a song about Sarah Palin we'd just written (and rehearsed squatting on the floor of an auto repair shop).

But you know what? It all came together. Kids danced. The sun shone. Barbecue smoke wreathed the stage. Grownups laughed at the funny lines and sang along with the familiar ones.

And a first for us: somebody shot video and posted it on YouTube. Eat your heart out, Mitch Albom.

Inside the Q

It's every performer's nightmare: you're up there on stage, and the audience is walking out.

We just played a gig where there was zero chance of that happening. Truly a captive audience.

We played at San Quentin Prison.

The folks who asked us to come perform for a graduation ceremony put on by the prison group "No More Tears" swore we'd come away amazed, and I think I can speak for the entire Eyewitness Blues Band on this one: we got more out of this than did the audience.

"No More Tears" is all about getting inmates to think about their past so they can build a better future. The audience for our set included cons, those who work with them, and family members of those who've been lost to violence. This, my friend, is what they talk about when they say "real life".

Band members Mike Sugerman and Patrick Sedillo brought more than their guitars. They also carried in cameras and audio recording gear. Here's the piece they did for CBS-5, and here's Mike's KCBS radio report.

But with all due respect to Mike and Patrick's talents, there's really no way to convey the impact of going inside. Little things, like the sudden shouting when guards escorted a pair of death-row inmates past. The rule is: every other nearby inmate must turn away and put both hands on the wall. Failure to do so is interpreted as an act of aggression and you can guess what happens next.

I had a number of memorable conversations with inmates about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I had a moment that just blew me away. I was sitting on the floor, watching the graduation ceremony, when it struck me: many of these men are smiling. Not cunning, nasty, I'm-gonna-mess-you-up smiles. Genuine, warm, loving smiles.

How much effort did it take to get from where they started to this?

The Eyewitness Blues Band has been blessed with some remarkable opportunities, but it'll be hard to top the day we went to prison.

A Most Unusual Gig

We're going to play a gig where the audience won't be allowed to dance. Where we are being told what to wear, and will have to undergo a full sevarch both arriving and departing.

We're playing at San Quentin.

I've been inside a couple of times as a reporter, but this will be a new experience. The band has been invited to help entertain inmates and guests associated with a program called "No More Tears". The program aims to bring peace to the lives of men who have often known very little of it.

We met the other day with the woman arranging our visit and learned a few of the rules:

• You can't wear blue. Or orange, yellow, red or much of anything else but black or white
• Handshakes are OK. Hugs are not.
• No gifts of any kind, not even guitar picks
• Inmates are not allowed to dance
• No drinks will be served

We've had to submit a very detailed list of the equipment we'll be bringing, and we're told the odds are good that something will go wrong at the gate. I'm sure it will be stressful at times, but I'm thrilled to have the opportunity.

Thanks, Alameda

The Beatles had Hamburg.

Could the Eyewitness Blues Band have Alameda?

We had a great time the other night at the Alameda Towne Centre shopping center. All sorts of set-up headaches (no sense re-living the misery here, but here's all you need to know: we started our sound check 11 minutes before showtime), but when the bell rang, we were there.

The audience was supportive and engaged. Kids dancing, parents bobbing their heads to the beat, and even plenty of senior citizens smiling along with us.

It's a great little venue: a temporary stage smack in the middle of an outdoor shopping center. A hundred or so folding chairs. Plenty of space for kids to dash around. And a new restaurant called Zeytini, with jam-packed outdoor tables full of people listening to the show.

Playing live is an interesting thing: you know right away if you're "on", but you don't really know how it sounds to the audience. You look for clues: are they laughing at the funny lines? Are they dancing or at least tapping their feet? Are they scrunching up their faces and walking away?

All we saw was positive feedback, and plenty of people came up afterward to say they thought we'd sounded great.

Even better: the lady from the shopping center said she loved it, and they want us back.

Hamburg, here we come.

Keyboards

We're a couple of days away from our next gig. It'll be hard to top our last gig for pure coolness--big crowd, great stage, great vibe.

But this time, we're playing with a different lineup. Sug won't be there (he's in New York on a family vacation), and Alameda piano whiz Kelly Park will be sitting in on keyboards.

It's an interesting step for the band. We go from being a tight-knit band of co-workers who share the same inside jokes and the same collective history to...well, I'm not sure, but I do know it's different.

Kelly, of course, will shine. He's an amazing musician and a wonderful personality, and there's something about a keyboard that can really fill out the sound of a band.

Ought to be fun. See you there!

We Did It!

I'll never run the 100 meters in less than 10 seconds, or break 50 seconds in the 100 freestyle.

But I do own a world record today!

Well, technically, I will share it with 2,051 others once the Guinness people certify it. We gathered in Concord's Todos Santos Plaza and played "This Land Is Your Land" over and over, in what will now be listed as the largest guitar ensemble ever.

That's me in the photo (courtesy of ace concert photographer Robert Hakin), pulling my best Pete Townshend as we struck the final chord, with 60's icon Country Joe McDonald (in the green shirt) looking on.

It was a truly amazing experience to be up on the stage, looking out over a sea of people with guitars. Old, young, virtuoso, beginner, tie-dye, coat-and-tie. The vibe after we set the record was even better: folks wandering around with their guitars, propping them up next to the table while having dinner, gently strumming familiar tunes while complete strangers tapped time or broke into song.

I've said it before about music: it's like sex. Decent by yourself, but really great when shared with others.

World Record Attempt

Another Eyewitness Blues Band moment that money can't buy: we're helping headline an attempt to break a world record.

OK, it's one of those funky Guinness records: "Largest Guitar Ensemble". Organizers hope to get 2008 (or more) guitar players to show up in Concord in a couple of days to all play "This Land Is Your Land" at the same time. Country Joe McDonald will lead the rendition, and your favorite blues/rock band will open the show, then help Country Joe lead the crowd.

Can't wait. Three chords, man. I'll be playing Kim Wonderley's Takamine acoustic-electric. Sweet guitar, although it does not carry the slogan that graced Woody Guthrie's guitar: "This machine kills fascists".

How Do We Do It?

Patrick got his shift changed a few days ago. In the current economy, it's good that everyone's working, but I think we now have the following times available when everyone in the band is free to rehearse and/or perform:

12pm - 3pm on Saturdays

That's pretty much it. Any other time slot requires at least one person to take a day off work.

Crazy.

The New PA Thing

Full disclosure: since the Eyewitness Blues Band sort of happened by accident, we never really had a proper set of gear. We've begged, borrowed and stolen PA gear for our gigs from Day One.

Thank goodness my brother Craig has quite a stable of audio gear (and has been willing to let us use it). But patience has its limits.

Back in January, Doug and I popped for a pair of JBL monitor speakers and stands, just before we played back-to-back gigs. The speakers performed spectacularly. The same can not be said for the PA amps we hauled with us to the second gig.

It was a near-disaster, saved at the last second when we pressed a drastically-underpowered backup amp (also borrowed) into service and worked without the stage monitors that backup amp was supposed to power. Not a very pleasant way to perform, worried that the jury-rigged setup would crater at any moment.

So now, we've taken the next step. We just bought a Yamaha powered mixer which should take care of us in small-to-medium sized gigs (anything bigger is guaranteed to have a house sound system we can use). It's a slightly-modernized version of the unit Craig had been loaning us, so we already sort of know our way around it.

Got a great deal, too, through an eBay seller in San Jose. But you have to wonder about karma: the reason the guy was selling the amp was because he'd bought if for his band, which broke up before they ever used it.

Whew!

Well, the show lasted almost as long as Woodstock, but at the end of the day (and I do mean the end of the day; it was almost midnight when we cleared out), I think a good time was had by all. At least the ones still awake.

I mentioned in my last post that I was nervous about performing without the safe, snug security blanket of the real musicians in the Eyewitness Blues Band. It was just Mike Sugerman and me, plus harmonica whiz Steve Rubenstein of the Chronicle (in photo with me) and a "house band" led by Alameda piano legend Kelly Park.

Turned out fine. In fact, better than fine. Sug turned into our front man and absolutely killed. Rubenstein knocked it out of the park. And Kelly and his crew really made it work. They took our songs and added a little here and there--I felt lucky to be in their capable hands.

We raised some badly-needed cash for the effort to keep elementary school music education alive in Alameda. We got to hang with some great musicians. And I think the audience enjoyed it.

Check out Ed Jay's photos here. And if you can, help out the cause here.

Headliners!

So it's come to this. Somehow, Mike Sugerman and I have become a headline act. I don't mean the whole band, just Mike and me.

Careful listeners will have noticed that Sug and I are the least-talented members of the Eyewitness Blues Band. But everyone else is working or traveling, so, somehow, Mike and I are going to try to perform.

It's a good cause: we're trying to help raise money to keep elementary school music programs alive in Alameda. I managed to finagle San Francisco Chronicle whiz Steve Rubenstein into joining us to play harmonica. But that leaves us a drummer, a bassist, and a lead guitarist shy of a real band.

Not to worry, said the organizers. We'll provide you guys with our house band!

Great, except that means I have to explain our songs to real musicians. When it comes to speaking "music", I'm about on the level of a guy scanning his Japanese phrasebook while trying to communicate in Tokyo.

We will meet the "house band" for the first time a few hours before the show begins. We'll see if we can communicate musically well enough to make it work. I have this scary feeling that they'll look at us and say, "You posers! Put down those instruments right now!"

One good thing: we're playing our two songs very early in the show. If it goes badly, everyone will have forgotten by the time the curtain falls.

Gettin' The Junk Out

I believe the phrase is "one man's meat is another man's poison"--what's good for you may not be such hot stuff for me.

I've found myself thinking about this as my wife and I empty our house. We're getting ready for a major remodeling project and using it as an opportunity to purge our lives of a lot of stuff.

Some of it is just plain trash. But most of it falls in that in-between place: we don't want or need it anymore, but maybe someone else can use it.

We're not the garage-sale type. We've already hauled loads to the e-waste place, the toxic-waste place, and the Goodwill place. But much remains, mostly furniture that's too worn or too out-of-style to make the cut in the "new" house we're building.

We've been wrestling with this. The last thing we want to do is send any more trash to the dump than we must (and trust me, we're pretty low-impact: our average weekly trash output is less than one kitchen-sized bag). Yet we have a few items that are just too big or too funky to donate.

Most notable is the big-ass entertainment center. Oak. 5 feet wide by 6 feet high. A relic of an era where a TV set would fit inside the entertainment center. And way too big to fit in our car (not that it would matter, anyway--I couldn't find anyplace that would accept it as a donation). I wasn't really up for dealing with the whole Craigslist thing (lots of swapped messages, waiting around for someone who may or may not show, then may or may not want the thing, etc.)

We were almost resolved to the sad fact that we might have to smash it to pieces and send it off with the construction debris when I read about Freecycle. Simple, sort-of-hippie idea: keep stuff in use. Post stuff you want to unload (or stuff you want). Neighbor-to-neighbor.

Turns out we have an active Freecycle community in Alameda. So I posted a brief description of the entertainment center, and by the next morning, three people expressed interest.

It's not gone yet, but I'm feeling good things for the old entertainment center. I think it's going to live on, stay out of the dump, and be of use to somebody else. Way cool.

One Coat Blues

So I've been busy (too busy to blog, apparently) the last few weeks, working my way through a paint job.

And you know what I've finally confirmed? The phrase "covers with one coat" is a lie 100% of the time.

I have two different gallons of "one coat coverage" paint for this project ("Ceiling White" for the, well, ceiling and "Peaceful Peach" for the walls), and neither comes close to covering the old paint with a single coat.

I know this will be the case each and every time I paint a room (on average, about every 4 years). And yet, like Charlie Brown kicking the football, I charge forward, only to have Lucy yank the ball away. Every time.

Wonder if I can wear one of those Charlie Brown sweaters with the zig-zag stripe while I roll on that paint?

Chicago '68 Redux?

OK, this is not a blog strictly about politics. Plenty of those out there already.

But you just can't ignore the drama of a Presidential campaign, and this is one for the ages. Both parties are choosing new candidates (no incumbents or obvious heirs-apparent, although you could argue the point when it comes to Hillary), and all sorts of interesting plot lines.

Including the possible return of the proverbial smoke-filled room. It is increasingly possible that the Democrats will head for Denver without a candidate haveing sewn up the nomination. That's when the 20% of party delegates who were not elected come into play.

These "super-delegates" are party regulars: pols, ex-officeholders, bigshots. They're not bound to anyone, although they certainly have allegiances. While it's tricky to determine, CBS News estimates Clinton has racked up more of their support than has Obama (look carefully at the full CBS News scorecard). And you don't have to have a PhD in poli sci to guess that an "establishment" candidate (Clinton) is likely to find more favor with this group than a "change" candidate (Obama).

Of course, I've piled up enough assumptions there to get a good argument going. So while I'm at it, I'll go a step farther: imagine this unelected crowd of super-delegates winds up deciding the nomination. What does that say to the throngs of energized voters who've responded to calls for change (whether those calls came from Hillary or Barack)? To them, the outcome could seem like "more of the same".

We already have way more cynical young people than we need. Let's hope the Democrats don't give them more reason to believe that their votes don't matter.

Whew!

Let me say this right up front: I have no idea how young rock bands manage to go on tour.

We just finished playing two Eyewitness Blues Band gigs in two nights in two cities. And I can barely stand up.

Load in. Set up. Fix. Sound check. Play. Take a break. Play another set. Tear down. Load out. Stagger to bed. Rest (briefly). Repeat. Hard damn work, and not made any easier by the fact that we don't exactly have world-class gear (our second gig was a full-on McGyver scene, with fill-in audio guy/troubleshooter Mike Davich reaching deep into his bag of tricks to clobber stuff together). Of course, it went a little easier the night before when my brother Craig ran the audio--he just takes care of stuff, and there are no surprises.

But both shows came off well. Maybe better than that. We had people smiling and dancing and yelling for more (at least that's what I think they were yelling). We even had a guy propose to his girlfriend during our Saturday night gig at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company (which we absolutely loved--great good, great little bar, great people). That's them in the photo, right after she said "yes". We serenaded them with Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy". Who says we're not romantic?

Like a Rolling Stone

48 hours from now, I will either:

1. Be so in love with the idea of being in a rock band that I'll quit my day job, or,
2. Be feeling every one of my 51 years of age and ready to quit the band.

See, your Eyewitness Blues Band is about to embark on its most ambitious effort thus far. We're playing two gigs in two nights at two different venues. And while we're accustomed to playing a single set of 30 to 45 minutes, these are pro-length gigs. That means two sets the first night and three sets the second night.

Add in all the loading-in and loading-out, the setting-up, tuning-up and other assorted stress-inducing activities, and I have a feeling we'll know why the reality of being in a professional band is decidedly less glamorous than the image.

This is not new news to Doug and Patrick, both of whom tried to earn a living with music and retreated to the relative sanity of the broadcast news business. That should tell you something: if the broadcast news business looks sane to you, then whatever else you're doing must really be crazy.

I have a feeling that by the end of the second night, I'll be too tired to even trash the hotel room.

Bike Porn

If this photo doesn't get your blood pumping...well, to each his own.

For the uninitiated, it's a Cervelo SLC-SL road bike. Same bike used by Team CSC (which employs one of my favorite riders, Jens Voigt). Really light. Really fast. Really expensive.

I just spent a weekend riding one, courtesy of my friend Don, who collects drool-inducing bikes the way some folks collect fast cars. Don's not a collector, though. He's a rider. Big difference.

For Don, it's not about the thing itself, but about its utility. And this thing does its job. It really does its job.

The Cervelo is amazingly light (you can easily lift the whole bike, even with loaded water bottles, with your index finger), but also very stiff. I had the sensation you get in a powerful car--hit the gas, and it just jumps.

Not that the Cervelo turned me into Jens Voigt, but I definitely felt like a better rider while we tackled the hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the flats along Santa Monica Bay. What I didn't expect is the bike's comfort level--despite its race breeding, it's an easy bike to ride. You're connected to the road, but you don't feel every wrinkle in the pavement.

Of course, this could all be my imagination. When I told my wife about the bike, she (no doubt thinking about the $6,000+ price tag) immediately challenged me: how do you really know it's a better bike? Is it possible that you're swayed by the knowledge that it's a superbike? Would a blind test reveal the same results?

She may be right. But thankfully, you can't blind-taste a bike the way you can coffee or wine. Could I tell the difference between that Cervelo and say, a Scott Addict (another superbike)? Maybe not. But I could sure tell the difference between my trusty old Trek 2100 and that Cervelo.

Even a blind rider could see that.

TiVo Crisis Averted

It's a long story, but I think we own the TiVo machine that Alexander Graham TiVo cranked out on his first day of business. While people now talk about their DVR capacity in terms of hundreds of hours, we sometimes have trouble recording an entire football game on our aging warhorse.

This leads, not surprisingly, to turf wars. It's me vs. my wife vs. our son, each wanting a slice of scarce capacity (she records "CSI", he records all kinds of Discovery Channel stuff, and I get left out).

So I finally broke down and bought an upgrade kit from WeaKnees. These guys will ship you a new, higher-capacity hard drive, already formatted with the TiVo software. All you have to do is wrestle open the TiVo case, pull the old drive, stick in the new one, and put the machine through its startup procedure.

It's every bit as easy as they say. They're not kidding when they say the case is hard to open (it just requires some serious effort, and a well-aimed screwdriver helps). But once you're in, we're talking 10 minutes.

Of course, I added a few minutes so I could clean up the disgusting pile of dust I found inside. Yuk. It makes me wonder if some of the occasional weirdness we got from the TiVo was actually caused by filthy living conditions on that circuit board.

But I digress. After a fast pass with the vacuum cleaner, I sealed things up (closing the case is a reverse wrestling match), and after letting the system phone home to retrieve its TV program guide, we're in Fat City. We now have 90 hours of storage, ready and waiting.

Which just means the arguments over who's hogging the hard drive will be slightly delayed.

The Lazarus Laptop

My wife will tell you I'm a packrat. I prefer to see myself as a kind soul who offers second chances to things that other less-charitable folks would consign to the scrap heap.

Sure, my wife is probably right, but every now and again I score a success.

I have just raised a laptop computer from the dead. This particular machine was a pretty zippy number back in '04 when I bought it for my daughter as a high school graduation gift. A few years of student abuse later, the poor thing was heaved onto my doorstep.

The corpse sat there for quite a while. Eventually, I undertook a forensic investigation and found:

• A dead hard drive
• A missing "y" key
• One broken USB port
• A missing power cable
• No operating system CD

Several eBay shopping trips later, I had replacements for everything except the USB jack (there's still one that works), although there was one false start that left me with two replacement hard drives. No worries; I'll go to eBay again and get one of those portable enclosures for the spare drive.

So now it was time for the mystical incantations. As anyone who's worked on a computer can tell you, a certain level of patience and optimism are required. But this went amazingly well. As I write, I still haven't attached that "y" key to the keyboard, but otherwise, the formerly-dead laptop is now very much alive.

Hallelujah.

The FirePod Rocks

Like Dylan once sang, "the times, they are a-changin' "

That gadget on the left is a FirePod (well, actually, the company that makes it now calls it an FP-10, but I like the sound of FirePod much better). You can plug up to 8 microphones or guitars into it, and then plug it into a laptop computer. Voila! Instant recording rig. We used it the other night to record an Eyewitness Blues Band rehearsal, and while we still have a few kinks to work out, the whole experience was pretty amazing.

This is not a mixer. What it does is let you capture up to 8 channels of audio, which you can mix in real time (or re-mix later) on your computer. Doug got this rig a day before we broke it out of the box and used it. Read the manual? Hah!

Despite our lack of familiarity, the only real hiccup was the fact that several of our bandmates were, uh, a little louder during the actual performance than they had been when we set the levels. Since we had no one to ride levels while we played, this resulted in some distorted tracks. But in general, considering how little effort it took to set up (and considering the acoustics of our cramped rehearsal space), we were all pretty thrilled with what we got.

At the very least, we now have a terrific instant-feedback tool. Play a song, play it back right away and hear what worked and what didn't. When we have time, we can re-mix and try to come up with an improved sound. But for now, take a listen to an un-remixed version of our song "15 Mill".

Yes, we will be keeping our day jobs.

X's and O's

Will it change the world? I don't know, but it's a damned interesting gadget.

I'm talking about the XO laptop computer, the product of the much-ballyhooed One Laptop Per Child project. Students of recent history will remember this all started with Nicholas Negroponte's dream of a $100 laptop for kids in developing countries. They missed the $100 target by a factor of 2 (you actually have to spend $400 to get one, but that includes the donation of one machine to a kid somewhere for every machine you receive).

I got mine a couple of days ago. Even in an age of stripped-down "quick start" manuals, the XO's documentation is remarkably sparse. There's not even a diagram to explain the function of the buttons.

Took me a few minutes to figure out how to open it (you have to flip those little "ears", which are actually the WiFi antennas, to unlock the thing). I also had to run to my "real" computer a few times to go online so I could figure out the somewhat inscrutable user interface (it's based on Linux and is unlike any Mac or PC you've ever seen).

First impressions?

• Man, is it slow (would another $25 buy a faster processor?)
• It's a more-than-adequate web-surfing and e-mail-checking machine
• The industrial design is innovative and it's well-built
• It will not replace a traditional laptop--but if you had one, you'd probably use it
• The display is way better than you'd expect
• The "mesh network" feature could change the world

That last item is worth amplifying. The XO doesn't just do WiFi (mine found both of my home WiFi networks easily and logged in quickly). It also finds all other XO's in the area and can set up an instant network between those machines.

For me, of course, that's just talk. There are no other XO's within range, so when I go to the screen that would show a little dot representing neighboring XO's, I get nothing. But if there were others, doors would open. We could share data (even working together within a document in real time), we could use a quirky little application that lets two XO's calculate the distance between themselves, or we could benefit from the mesh network's ability to share the strongest WiFi Internet signal among other mesh members.

A meshed world could be a very interesting place. It's one thing to network over great distances via the Internet. Imagine doing so over shorter distances, simply by turning on your computer. Endless possibilities.

Of course, this is all subject to the phenomenon known as "network effects". The more things you have on a network, the more valuable it becomes (one cell phone is interesting, but a million of them creates something way more valuable). My little XO is a handy gadget in its own right, but a house or workplace full of them would be much cooler.

I'll probably tuck mine in my messenger bag often. I'm sure it'll start a lot of conversations in coffee shops. With any luck, I'll find some other XO'ers with whom to mesh.

Play That Funky Music

I learn more every day about how much more I need to learn about the guitar. 6 strings, 24 frets, endless frustration.

At a recent rehearsal, the band decided to try a little James Brown-style fling. Funk guitar is deceptively tricky stuff. It's all about finding that elusive rhythmic groove. But hey, I'm a rhythm guitar player, right?

If only it was that simple. I'm watching Patrick's hands flying around the guitar neck as he lays down some funk that the Godfather of Soul's guitar man "Catfish" Collins would have dug. And I'm feeling mighty funk-less.

So the next day I'm poking through The Guitar Handbook, a very cool book I'd been given as a Christmas gift by KCBS colleague (and real musician) Kim Wonderley. Somewhere in a section about chord theory, there's a mention of how funk music relies on 9th chords and 11th chords. I will spare you the heavy-duty musical details, but fix your gaze on this lovely chord diagram:

That, my friend, is a beautiful thing. It's a nice, funky-sounding chord...formed with one finger! It turns out the whole funk guitar sound can be created just by sliding up or down a fret from the starting point.

I love the 11th chord. No excuses now. It's time to lay down the boogie and play that funky music 'till I die.